


Delicate

by jellyfishline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baking, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, POV Castiel, vaguely season 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 12:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3120701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishline/pseuds/jellyfishline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Walking on eggshells,” is a human idiomatic phrase. Cas knows it well; he has heard it often. It means: this is a delicate situation that must be handled delicately.</p>
<p>There are literal eggshells on the floor of the Bunker’s kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delicate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Psynatural](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psynatural/gifts).



> I feel like this is nothing like you asked for, and if that is the case, I am very sorry. I hope you like it anyway.

“Walking on eggshells,” is a human idiomatic phrase. Cas knows it well; he has heard it often. It means: this is a delicate situation that must be handled delicately.

There are literal eggshells on the floor of the Bunker’s kitchen.

“Whoops,” Dean says. “I was aiming for the trash—guess I need to work on my game.”

He bends over to pick them up, but Cas already has them in his hand.

He holds them delicately.

***

Once, not long ago, (although it feels several millennia past, a few centuries at least—Cas’s sense of time and age is forever altered and uncertain) Castiel experienced his first car ride. He and Dean were driving many miles to confront the archangel Raphael. This was how Cas learned that humans (especially Dean) do not like silence (especially while driving).

Dean tried to ‘make conversation’ the way one would strike rocks together to make fire, if one were doing so out of habit and had no real interest in making a spark. When his attempts failed, he resorted to blasting loud music from the car speakers instead. At the time, Cas found this perplexing. It sounded like nothing more than noise.

But now Cas understands. Music is a form of communication—like poetry, like the written word, like the rising intonation that indicates a question. It has an alphabet of its own. Rules and consistencies. Cas listens to the radio, now. When he was Graceless, alone, abandoned, uncertain, the loudest songs had granted him a greater sense of peace. Now he turns to softer songs, ones that sound the way hunger aches. Humans sing of many things, but mostly, they sing of love.

Love. Cas doesn’t understand it. But at least he knows his ignorance is in good company.

***

Cas puts the eggshells in the trash. Then he takes a seat at the table, and watches.

“You just gonna sit there?” Dean asks.

“Yes,” Cas says. Dean’s face is twisted, his brow low. “If you don’t mind,” he adds, because it’s possible he’s stumbled, yet again, into an invisible boundary. Personal space.

“Nah,” Dean says, and turns back to his work. His motions are methodical, forceful. Perhaps angry. Cas wonders if he isn’t welcome after all.

But as he watches, Dean’s motions smooth, his face unfurrows, his hands are neat. He stirs a bowl, then licks some unknown concoction off his fingers, considering the taste—Cas considers the minute creases of his eyelids. Human faces are so boundlessly expressive, so infinitely complex. Cas understands relativity and gravity and evolution and all the scientific theories humanity took centuries to compose; he understands them as inherently as his vessel undrstands how to separate food into chemical digestible components. And yet, for all his understanding, Cas can barely comprehend a human face.

Dean’s least of all.

And yet, he looks. He looks and looks for what he knows he will not find, and if he does find, he will not recognize.

***

Lately, Cas has started compiling a list of all the things he wants.

It’s very difficult. He used to want for nothing, as all angels did. Or so he thought. Perhaps he wanted even then, but simply did not have the words to say it.

But he has words now. He has them, so he uses them.

He wants his siblings to stop fighting. Never again does he want to end an angel’s life, to see them squabble with each other like—well, like _children_. For they are children, children of God, but they are also better than this. At least, Cas would like to be better than this. Their arguments have become so petulant. So human.

Cas wants humanity. Craves it, which is strange. He craves hunger and aches in his back and neck from bending too low while stocking Gas’n Sip shelves. He craves the sting of a papercut and the prickle of tears in his eyes. He craves the sudden, unbearable pain of a broken arm.

He craves the smell of roses. The light that gentles a stormy afternoon. He craves the way rain fills the chest of his vessel with an instinct, older than language, to horde and bury and find a pack to huddle with during the storm. He craves the impossible fragile weight of an infant crying in his arms, the soft hiss of boiling water over a makeshift stove, cold that digs strong fingers under his skin, and Dean. He craves Dean.

Dean, with his eyes that speak strange patterns that shift so quickly Cas can barely catch them. Dean, who laughs loudly and rudely and can be so bright, so cruel. Dean, who smiles. Dean, who calls him _friend_ and _brother_. Dean, who fills Cas’s body with the strangest mixture of terror and relief. Beauty so strong, it hurts to be near it. And hurts even worse to be away from it.

The feeling is love. It has to be. A peculiar, fierce flavor of love he hasn’t found in the eyes of his kin or even in his other friends of Earth. It’s not the love he feels for his fallen brothers, the grief and disappointment and care. It’s not the love he feels for Sam, the happiness at Sam’s happiness, fear at his fear. It’s something much sharper, fragile and intense—a bonfire compared to the sun.

It’s foolish to want it. To want something that seems an equal mix of pleasure and pain. But Cas has always been foolish, even when he was one of the Host. And now that he is numb, full of Grace and lacking in sensation, able to see colors humanity can’t fathom but having lost the redness of roses, Cas dreams of dreaming, dreams of aching, dreams of love.

***

Dean is making pie. It’s a complicated, multi-step process.

“The important part is not to overwork the dough,” he says. “That makes the crust tough.”

Cas thinks of unsatisfactory meals, things unearthed from garbage cans, meat that is gristle and stale bread that sticks in his teeth. He nods, understanding. Cooking is a science. Unlike most sciences, it is uniquely human—angels have no concept of it. No need for it.

Cas, however, wants to learn.

Apples are sliced thin and peeled, the cores removed. Spices are added. The mess is laid in the chilled hollow of crust lining the pan. Dean very carefully crimps the edges of the pie until they are waved and stained with his fingerprints.

The pie is set in the oven to cook for precisely 35 minutes. Dean chews his lips. Nervousness, perhaps.

“It looks very good,” Cas says.

Dean snorts, and walks away.

***

Walking on eggshells. Personal space. These are the things Cas needs to learn, if he is ever to have happiness with Dean. He is always making mistakes. Dean is always getting angry and Cas is always the cause.

Calling Dean late at night when he is sleeping. Bringing up an old wound at the wrong time. Standing too close. Standing not close enough. Cas’s stance is always wrong when Dean is around—he is always being brought to his knees. Metaphorically.

He and Dean and Sam are watching TV. Dean is talking enthusiastically about how much he hates the film they are watching. He begins to describe the plot of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ —a better movie, he says, one that Cas should see. Cas tells Dean that he already knows about that movie, that Metatron downloaded its information into his head. The Ark of the Covenant is not actually a box. Many things about it are inaccurate.

And suddenly Dean is angry again. He glares and grumbles and leaves the room, unhappy. Cas still doesn’t know what he did wrong. He watches TV with Sam instead. They find a documentary about elephants.

Elephants recognize the bodies of the dead. They grieve. The documentary relates this as if it is new information, as if elephants haven’t been mourning since they first walked the Earth. Humans are so prideful. They always assume that everything inhuman is lesser—is incomplete. Perhaps they are right.

Perhaps they aren’t so different from God’s other arrogant children.

Dean kills so easily. He feels no remorse at an angel’s death. He asks Cas to spend less time worrying over the Host, to look out for himself—to be selfish. Dean acts as though Cas is more important than every other angel in existence, or as if he isn’t an angel at all, but something Else. It once irritated Cas, to be treated like a pet or a toy, a weapon or other convenience. But he no longer thinks that’s what Dean means to do when he sets Cas apart from his kin.

Dean cares for him. But he cares in some vague, human way Cas doesn’t understand. Dean calls Cas often, but avoids him in person, in the Bunker. Dean ignores Cas when he is Graceless, no longer useful, but is afraid when Cas becomes truly an angel once again. Dean is inscrutable.

One day, Cas thinks, hopes, he will understand. He will learn where the boundaries are and the most efficient ways to avoid them. He will speak soft and tread light. Dean will smile at him, and Cas will know, _he is well, yes, all is well_.

For now he flounders. And hopes.

***

Cas sits at the kitchen table, watching the timer above the stove tick down. He wants to be here when Dean takes the pie from the oven. He wants to break bread with him—taste crust and apples and cinnamon and craftsmanship. Offer support. Compliments. Presence.

More than anything, Cas thinks, Dean hates to be alone.

The timer shrieks its warning. Dean returns and slams it off with a curse. He removes the pie from the oven. It is golden and lovely, the scent enticing.

“Third time’s the charm,” Dean mutters, glaring at the juice bubbling from a hole in the crust.

Wordlessly, Cas gets the plates.

***

Cas has a strategy. It may not make him loved by Dean, but it will, at least, bring him some peace of mind. For as long as he is able, until his stolen Grace destroys his body or some other cataclysm steal the choice from him, Cas will make Dean’s life easy. He will remove the threats that crease Dean’s brow. He will keep his troubles quiet so Dean won’t be bothered by them. He will say the right things, laugh at the right places, and be there as often as he is needed, no longer.

Perhaps it’s not so different from the way things have always been, Cas wandering behind Dean like a starving man retracing the footsteps of salvation. But unlike before, Cas knows his place now. His place is to listen, and comfort, and care for. He will be quiet, stealthy as a hunter approaches a trap. A trap of kindness.

Dean will not accept an honest compliment, a gentle touch, the unguarded words of affection. Dean is a puzzle, but there are some things Cas is certain of, like his loyalty, his greatness, and that in so many ways he is the same man Cas met in the darkness so long ago—he still believes he doesn’t deserve to be saved.

Cas would like it if his last act in this world was to prove the truth to Dean.

***

The pie is beautiful and thick. Dean cuts two large, steaming slices for the two plates. Cas wishes he could still feel as before, and know the scent, the taste, as something other than a chemical composite.

Dean lifts a bite to his lips. Cas’s Grace reaches out without thought, just to soothe the heat from the bite before Dean could burn himself with it.

Cas takes less care with his own piece. His Grace will heal the minor burn to his mouth easily. And the pie will taste the same to him hot or otherwise.

Dean frowns at his first bite. And frowns deeper at the second. By the third, he tosses down his fork.

“Fuck,” he spits.

“It’s good,” Cas says. All the chemical components are there. The crust is flaky.

Dean stares at him in disbelief. “No it’s not,” he says. “It _sucks_. No, stop eating it!” Dean grabs Cas’s plate away from him. “What’s missing?” he snaps at the pie, as if it might answer. “I thought I had everything. Sour apples, cinnamon, nutmeg—” He freezes, mouth open. “Sugar. I forgot the sugar. Shit. Shit!”

“Dean, it’s all right,” Cas says. Dean looks livid.

“No, it’s not!” he says again. “Do you know how many times I’ve tried to get it right? It never fucking works, I always make some dumbass mistake and—shit. Whatever. I’m done.”

Dean throws the pan, the plates, all the evidence of his work into the sink. Dean turns on the faucet. His shoulders slump.

Cas gets up from his seat.

“Don’t,” Dean mutters. “Just… don’t.”

Cas isn’t sure what Dean wants him to do. He comes to a stop at Dean’s elbow, waiting. Dean is silent.

“It was beautiful,” Cas says, eyeing the way the crust dissolves and crumbles under the water pressure. Dean snorts and says nothing.

“Dean, is it really so important that you never make a mistake?”

“I dunno, Cas. Is it really so important that you always stick your nose into other people’s business?”

Cas doesn’t have time to react before Dean is already apologizing.

“No—shit, Cas, that wasn’t—sorry. Fuck, this was a dumb idea.”

“It’s okay, Dean.”

“Stop saying that,” Dean grumbles.

“But it’s true,” Cas says. “You don’t have to expect so much from yourself. Cooking is much more complicated then—”

“Yeah, Cas, I know,” Dean bites. “Stop trying to comfort me, okay?”

“But you’re upset.”

“Yeah, so what? Doesn’t mean you have to get all—” Dean waves a hand vaguely at Cas’s face. “Y’know.”

Cas doesn’t know, actually. But now doesn’t seem like a good time to point that out.

“I just,” Dean mutters, not meeting Cas’s eye, “I just wanted to do something _right_.”

Cas hesitates. This feels dangerous. Delicate. Dean is in a volatile mood, and this mistake seems to be upsetting him far more than it should.

But Cas has to comfort him. Has to. In whatever way he can.

He rests his hand on Dean’s shoulder. It’s a small gesture, trivial almost, but it makes Dean exhale a harsh breath.

“You can always try again,” Cas says.

Dean is still not meeting his eyes. “Yeah. I guess.”

Dean stares at the remains of his afternoon’s hard work, wasted. Cas stares at the harsh artificial light, at the way it brings flecks of gold into his eyes.

Dean is beautiful. But he is so much more beautiful when he smiles.

“We could buy one,” Cas says.

“What?” Dean says. “No.”

“Why not?” Cas doesn’t understand the surprised arch of Dean’s brow. This seems an obvious solution. “There are a lot of places we could buy one.”

“But it’s—it’s not the same!” Dean says. His cheeks flush red, with anger or embarrassment. “I mean, it’s not… I wanted… it’s supposed to be for us. You, me, and Sam.”

“And it can’t be if you don’t make it?”

“No!” Dean says. And sighs. “Look, it’s—I—have you ever had pie before? Real, homemade, fresh pie?”

“No,” Cas says. He never had the inclination as an angel, or the opportunity as a human.

Dean’s eyes fill with something like relief. “Well, lemme tell you, there’s nothing better. I wanted to—to show you.”

“I see,” Cas says, though he’s not certain he does. “You mean like a… gift?”

“Yes. No. I mean—shit.” Dean runs a hand through his hair. “I mean, you’re always dashing off places. You got important angel shit to do, I get it, it’s just—I wanted to have a minute. I wanted to sit down at a table and eat some damn pie and not feel like the world’s ending. And I… I wanted you to be there.”

“I’m still here,” Cas says, but Dean shakes his head.

“No, you aren’t. You’re here, but you’re gonna be gone. You’re always gone, Cas. You got places to go and stuff to figure out, but I wanted—I _want_ you to know, you got a place here. You got a seat at this table. Don’t think you ain’t wanted, ‘cause you are. I want you _here_.”

“And you wanted to say that with… pie,” Cas says, slowly.

Dean’s shoulders deflate. “Well. Yeah. Fuck. I’m an idiot.”

“Dean,” Cas says. Softly. Delicately. “Let me help.”

Dean stares, his eyes murky green, unreadable. “You don’t have to do that, Cas.”

“I know,” Cas says. “But I want to.”

***

Cas, in his time among humanity, has watched many nature documentaries. He has also watched much of nature without television cameras to get in the way. He knows the way birds fly in flocks and wolves travel in packs and bees work tireless for their queens. He knows that there are many shapes of family, many shades of love.

He knows that humans, for all their mortal simplicity, have endless ways to show affection. From a simple touch to ballad poems a hundred verses long, they have infinite creativity in love’s expression. Cas found it curious, confusing, once. Now he pays attention.

He knows what it means when Dean pulls the covers over Sam, asleep at his desk. He knows what it means when Dean works hard at something and asks for no thanks in return.

Sometimes, Dean smiles at him. And Cas may not yet be certain, but he is starting to learn what it means.

***

It takes them a long time to finish the second pie. Cas’s inexperience is obvious, and more than once Dean has to take something out of his hands and explain proper technique. By the time the dessert is in the oven, Cas and Dean are both exhausted and covered in flour. And happy.

Life is often unpredictable. The people in your life even more so. But there are some few and fragile things that Cas is certain of. Relativity. Gravity. Kindness. And that the pie, when he finally tastes it, will be sweet.


End file.
